“Cowabunga it is,” Harris said heartily, but his face was pale.
Master Sergeant Donald Logan sat in his idling Toad named CLEAVE and listened to the radio traffic as Echo element pushed up on foot along Cass and Woodward and entered the first of the skyscrapers known to contain enemy combatants. They were in no hurry; they were pretty sure they had the enemy surrounded. There were Army troops encircling the entire New Center area, although they were admittedly a little thin on the north and east. But they had multiple drones up to spot anyone attempting to sneak away. Now it was just a matter of rooting them out.
Hotel element—of which he had command—had pushed north along the Lodge Freeway in force and positioned themselves at the West Grand Boulevard intersection. He knew he had a few guerrillas in the large apartment building east of his position; command had radioed that their drones had spotted a squad moving into the building, and a portion of Charlie had engaged with them earlier. That group had lost an IMP but one of the troopers told Logan they’d killed at least ten guerrillas in addition to destroying one of their vehicles and ramming the other through the front of the building.
Logan was perfectly happy to let the guerrillas hide out in the apartment building. He was in no hurry to send his men in there. Door-to-door fighting was a sucker bet and chewed through people no matter how good they were. And his men weren’t that good. This late into the war the draftees he was getting were disgruntled, barely trained, and often borderline malnourished. He had the advantage of armor, and was going to use it.
The guerrillas reportedly had used some anti-tank weapons against Charlie and Foxtrot elements earlier, RPGs and grenades and Molotovs, so he was not going to go anywhere near tall buildings until they’d been cleared by dismounted soldiers bottom to top. And that was why his hatch was closed. Command reported their drone revealed the turret hatch of Charlie element’s destroyed Toad was open, indicating it was most likely the rebels’ good luck which had killed that tank crew. One hand grenade through the Commander’s hatch could incapacitate an entire crew.
“Hotel One-One to One-Two,” he said into the radio.
“Go for One-Two,” the commander of the other Toad replied.
“What’s your fuel status, over.”
There was a bit of a pause before Carter in the other tank replied. “Six and a half, maybe seven hours if we’re just going to sit here idling.”
“Roger that, we’re about the same.”
Suddenly their tank shuddered and boomed as if it was a bell struck by a giant hammer. There were more explosions all around them, too many to count. Logan grabbed hold of the bulkhead to keep from being flung to the floor.
“I’ve lost the ISU, I’ve lost the ISU!” his gunner shouted. “Backup’s out too. I think we were hit by an RPG.”
“Make that two,” Logan muttered. There was garbled screaming over the radio. Logan clicked to transmit. “Hotel One-One to Hotel element, anybody got eyes on? We’ve lost our ISU.” He got no coherent response and tried it again. There was more shouting over the radio but he couldn’t make it out.
“Anyone get that?” he asked his men. Nobody had. “Goddamnit,” he swore. He knew what he had to do, but that didn’t mean he liked it. “I’m going up,” he called out to his crew, and opened his hatch.
Hotel One-Two was fifty feet away with smoke jetting out of a black-edged hole in the top of the turret. Logan immediately recognized it for what it was, a rocket or RPG round had breached the hull. Most likely everybody inside Hotel One-Two was dead but he still had to check, once he was clear. Behind the tank an IMP was slewed at an angle, and as he watched the back hatch was slowly coming down, gray haze pouring out of the interior. There were strange impact marks across the top of the APC’s hull, and smoke trailed from two of them. As he watched two bloodied soldiers crawled out of the vehicle and huddled behind cover. No others followed.
Logan grabbed the paddle grips of the M240 and surveyed his front. He didn’t see any guerrillas or immediate threats but he noticed that a substantial number of windows on the top floor of the apartment building were now blown out. He fired his machine gun, working it across the face of the apartment building from one side to the other, burning through more than half the 200-round belt of ammo. He had no idea if he hit anyone but he was hoping to keep their heads down, and he heard others to his flanks firing as well. Most of the windows in the apartment building’s fifth and sixth floors disintegrated under the hail of bullets. He looked around again. One IMP was still undamaged, as were most of the Growlers, although he saw windows on the non-armored ones spiderwebbing from incoming enemy rifle fire.
“Lewis!” he called to his gunner.
“Sergeant?”
“Traverse left ten degrees and fire!”
“I’m blind down here.”
“I fucking know that!”
The turret rotated left and then the whole tank rocked as the main gun fired. The top right corner of the apartment building erupted in a flash, metal and glass and drywall forming a cloud which began drifting downward.
“Down five degrees, left five degrees and fire again!” Logan called out. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t “aim” the main gun when they was shooting at a huge fucking building right in front of them. He’d walk the rounds in. He heard the impact of incoming rounds as the guerrillas in the building continued to fire. He even caught a glimpse of some muzzle flashes, but none of the bullets seemed to be hitting near him.
“Roger that.” The turret rotated, and the gun dipped a bit. Then the cannon roared again. The face of the apartment building ruptured outward as the high explosive round impacted between the fifth and sixth floors, but in the fraction of a second between the firing of his main gun and the impact, there was some sort of flare in one of the darkened apartments, and Logan had just enough time to recognize the incoming rocket for what it was.
“We’re blowing the bolt hole in one minute,” Barker’s voice came over the radio. “Anybody that’s not here who wants to leave this way needs to get their ass here now.”
Ed knew the man was talking about closing off the mouth of the narrow sewer pipe through which they’d be leaving the area. The Tabs, once they made it into the Albert Khan building and found the crater in the floor, would probably be able to figure out there was a sewer pipe down there through which the dogsoldiers had arrived and departed, but deducing exactly which direction it headed and where it might exit, much less digging it out enough to follow them, would take them a substantial amount of time. Enough time for the dogsoldiers to make it to the much-larger trunk line and begin heading north, where they had plans to disburse in small groups throughout the city.
“Quigley,” Barker said, “good luck. We’ll see you when we see you.”
Ed smiled. “Everybody ready?” He shouted up and down the hallway. “Yell out if you’re not.” He waited for a five count but still heard nothing. “Sergeant Weaver, on you,” he called out to her.
Knocking out the two Toads as well as the two IMPs wasn’t just a worthy goal, it was pretty damn necessary if the squad wanted to get out of there alive. Sarah and Harris from Roadrunner were in the corner apartment with two Spikes each. Ed moved on his knees from the hallway into the adjacent apartment next to George. The two apartments on the southwest corner of the building were the closest to the Tab armor elements on the Lodge service drive.